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The Marvel movies have always had pretty good special effects, which is a bit of a necessity when specializing in superhero movies. Ant-Man and The Wasp was no exception, featuring some great CGI sequences involving the two heroes. While the ants themselves weren’t too realistic, pretty much everything looked great, including new villain Ghost.

Speaking with io9, director Peyton Reed decided to discuss how they brought the character’s powers to the big screen. Ghost was visually interesting from the get-go so the special effects team deserve a lot of credit for that.

Reed actually wasn’t too confident at first, revealing that some of the effects felt like they came from a 1980’s movie. While Reed and the effects team would eventually get it right, it’s clear that there everyone involved struggled to make it work.

“We played around with [the] effects and some of them felt too two dimensional. There was one batch of effects that came in and was like Max Headroom from the ‘80s. [I thought] ‘This is not going to work.’”

Grounding the powers into some sort of realism was needed and the team definitely pulled that off. Reed discusses this as well, pointing out how playing with the lights helped a lot.

“[We] played with light and made the light a little prismatic. It tied into what we were doing in the Quantum Realm [and] made it feel as photographic and optical was possible, as opposed to sort of more digital.”

Another fascinating aspect is how Reed showed the character’s powers grow without it being explicitly said. Fans who’ve seen the film know that her powers growing isn’t always a good thing since - spoiler alert - they’re actually killing her.

“There were a couple of shots that were key. One is a very simple dialogue scene with Laurence Fishburne and Hannah John-Kamen, where she turns to leave and her face sort of stays behind. Another one [is] in the chase where she knocks the guy off the motorcycle and moves through the cycle. Her image precedes her and then she catches up to it.”

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Nico Parungo graduated with a film degree from the De La Salle College of St. Benilde. He loves movies, comic books, video games and the WWE. He also likes to check out games and animated shows that are deemed underrated.